Glenn Grothman Asks Witness How OSHA Can Justify ‘Identical Obligations’ On A Range Of Workplaces

7 months ago

At a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) questioned Felicia Watson, Senior Counsel at the Littler Mendelson, about justification for OSHA compliance standards.

Transcript

00:00Thank you. And next we go to Mr. Grothman from Wisconsin.

00:03Thank you. We'll go to Ms. Watson.

00:06OSHA's proposed rule, adopt right now, and we've talked about this before,

00:11adopts a one-size-fits-all rule for heat illness and injury prevention.

00:18Identical requirements across indoor, outdoor environments across all sectors,

00:22including agriculture, construction, and manufacturing, without differentiation.

00:27This broad application fails to consider critical distinctions in worksite conditions.

00:34How does OSHA justify imposing identical obligations on such a broad and diverse range of workplaces?

00:45Thank you, sir, for the question.

00:47Their justification, obviously, is to protect workers.

00:50I know that during the rulemaking process, during the SBREFA panels,

00:55those discussions and the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,

01:00many, many people requested industry-specific standards

01:04that apply to the unique differences among their industries.

01:07So I'm familiar with construction, residential construction, so I'll speak to that.

01:12Job sites change daily, sometimes hourly, depending on what's going on.

01:16And what works in manufacturing, where you might have a static situation,

01:22obviously not all manufacturing, but there are circumstances where you have a static work environment.

01:27That doesn't change.

01:28That's much easier to manage than a construction site,

01:31where you've got roofers coming and they're installing the roof,

01:34and then they're going on to the next job site,

01:36and then you've got people coming in and doing the house wrap.

01:40And so that constant changing isn't helpful.

01:44And I think that that concern among stakeholders that I've spoken with

01:48is that if you treat everyone exactly the same with limited flexibility,

01:54it makes it difficult to get a robust plan that is specific to the industry.

01:59It's the type of thing that causes people to hate government, right?

02:03Maybe, yes.

02:05Maybe, okay.

02:07Sometimes, yes, sir.

02:08You raised many questions about the walk-around rule.

02:15We'll kind of touch on this again.

02:17Can you expand on potential liability, employer liability,

02:22in the event a third-party representative is injured during a walk-around inspection?

02:27Yes, sir.

02:28So OSHA actually addressed that because a number of stakeholders raised those during their comments in this process,

02:36and OSHA basically responded in the final rule saying that there were plenty of statutes available at the state and local level,

02:46tort liability, those types of things,

02:48and so OSHA wasn't going to comment or make a determination on that.

02:52So essentially, OSHA's not involved in that piece of it.

02:56If someone's injured and they end up suing the employer where the job site was, it's up to the state court systems to sort it.

03:04Well, I'll ask Mr. Barab a question here.

03:06As I understand it, in my district, we had just a tragedy in which a young man died in an agriculture accident.

03:17And that was a small farm.

03:19I guess the guy had maybe three or four employees.

03:22I kind of surprised his mother that OSHA would not apparently do an investigation even if somebody died.

03:31Could you elaborate on that?

03:33Yeah, you're talking about Stacey Seibold and her 19-year-old son, Mitch McDaniel,

03:37who was killed by an auger in a farm in your district.

03:40Yeah, OSHA, the Congress has put a rider on OSHA's appropriations bill since the 1970s,

03:49saying that OSHA cannot basically step foot on a farm with 10 or fewer employees.

03:54They can't go in for an investigation, even a fatality investigation.

03:57They can't even go in and pass out fact sheets.

04:01Yeah, it's a terrible injustice.

04:02And we're seeing, you know, we see a lot of workers, including young workers like Mitch McDaniel,

04:07die on these workplaces that, you know, from hazards that are preventable

04:11and where the employer and all employers could learn from an OSHA investigation,

04:16yet OSHA is not allowed to go on to those workplaces.

04:18So in other words, if there were 11 guys on the farm, they could have investigated.

04:21Exactly.

04:22But with 10, 10 workers could die on a farm and OSHA still wouldn't be able to go on to the farm.

04:26And you could have, if it was a little bakery with five employees, OSHA could get involved.

04:35If somebody got killed in a bakery with five employees, OSHA definitely would get involved.

04:39But for some reason, can you think of any philosophical reason why if somebody dies,

04:45we're not even talking about somebody becoming a paraplegic for the rest of their life.

04:49If somebody dies under the current law, we just, we apparently don't express it.

04:57I think we're dealing with the power of the agriculture industry and the so-called sanctity of the small farm.

05:02I don't know.

05:03This is kind of a myth, again, that was created.

05:05And this, again, that's been on the books since the 1970s.

05:08It makes no sense and workers are dying because of it.

05:11So, well, thank you for pointing that out.

Glenn Grothman Asks Witness How OSHA Can Justify ‘Identical Obligations’ On A Range Of Workplaces

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